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FARMVILLE – Granville Scott, the director of Adrift in New York, the Waterworks Players’ upcoming production, is relatively new to the Waterworks stage.  However, he brings to it almost 50 years of immersion in the theatre as an actor, director, and playwright.

“My first acting role was with the old Virginia Theatre as one of the baseball players in Our Town,” he said.  “It was 1974, and I was eighteen, fresh out of high school.  I’ve been on the Richmond theater scene for over 40 years, and have worked with virtually every company there.”

There’s one type of role he loves more than the rest, however. 

“I love to play villains,” Scott said with a smile. “Two of my favorites were Professor Moriarty in the Sherlock Holmes plays, and the psychotic Justice Wargrave in Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.  But during the late 1980s through the late ‘90s I played plenty of heroes as part of the Patrick Henry reenactments.  I played almost every role except George Washington.  I especially like outdoor productions, and I worked with at least two dozen companies during the summers.  Two of my favorite venues were Dogwood Dell when I was part of the Jesus Christ Superstar cast, and Agecroft Hall, where I was in several Shakespeare plays.”

In fact, Scott said, one of his first performances at William and Mary as a young theater major was in summer stock. That play was The Common Glory, a musical drama about the rise of Jamestown, in an amphitheater by Lake Matoaka on the college campus.  

“I also kept busy in a Busch Gardens show, “Ghosts of the Globe” (Shakespeare’s theater in London),” Scott said. “Eight shows a day, six days a week—over 1,000 performances.  I think I played almost every role except the heroine!”

Granville Scott focuses on Shakespeare

“Shakespeare has been my abiding interest,” Scott added. “He was my concentration in my major.  Over the years, I’ve acted in King Lear three times.  The most memorable for me was when Ralph Waite (John-Boy’s father in The Waltons) played Lear, and I had two small roles:  the “2nd spear holder on the left,” and the “Old Man” in Lear’s mad scene.”

He started directing in high school, with with Ionesco’s absurdist play The Bald Soprano.  In college one of his directing assignments was Brecht’s The Elephant Calf.  

“During my sophomore year my girlfriend and I broke up, but I stayed busy,” Scott said. “Nine plays in one semester alone.”

His playwriting and production credits include three one-act plays and, beginning in the 1990s, a series of short audio plays in conjunction with Lion’s Den Studios.  One of those plays had a live reading at the Climate Theater in San Francisco, and another was broadcast on Canadian radio.

So, what brought Scott to Waterworks?  

“When Richmond went dark during the pandemic, I began surfing the web for any theater within a 50-mile radius.  I chanced on Waterworks’ call for auditions for its online production of A Christmas Carol; I auditioned and got the part of Scrooge,” Scott said. “A year later, when Waterworks began live theater again I got the part of the Reverend Canon Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest.  That’s when I met Leigh Lunsford and several other folks, and stayed in touch.”

Since Adrift in New York is a 1961 melodrama that hearkens back to those of the 1890s, do melodramas contain any teachable, serious moments?  

Granville Scott was quick to answer.  “Oh, yes.  The stereotypes, the cliches, the over-the-top speeches and body language are really funny,” Scott said. “But there’s something about the villains always being bad and unredeemable, and the good characters always being honest and kind, without a shred of irony or self-consciousness.  That’s a dynamic, I think, that the audience wants to believe in.”

The cast for Adrift is listed below:

Silas Weston/Monty (The Dip) Moran . . .  Craig Challender

Martha Weston/Dani Fogarty . . . Christy Moore

Nellie Weston . . . Kolby Logue

Jack Merriwell . . . Elijah Logue

Francis (Desperate) Desmond . . . Erik Varela

Jim Burke . . . Billy Tucker

Hi Perkins/Maggie Clancy (Old Mag) . . . Leigh Lunsford

Mulligan . . . John Meacom

Aunt Sarah/Sadie May . . . Sarah Varela

Slick McCoy . . . James Eggleston Shepherd

Adrift in New York:  Or, Her First False Step opens on April 21 and 22 at 8 p.m.  There will be a matinee performance on April 23 at 2 p.m.  The final two performances will be on April 28 and 29 at 8 p.m.  For ticket information, call the box office at (434) 392-3452, or consult the Waterworks website, waterworks players.org.

Craig Challender wrote this article for The Farmville Herald.